Manifesto

A few months ago while I was still working the night shift in the garage I was having a political rant with one of the taxi drivers that frequented the establishment. I spent about 2 hours talking to him and as per usual he couldn't wrap his head around it so I told him that I would write it down and e-mail it to him. In the end I spent a week writing my manifesto for the fictional Dioynisis Party - which is my vision of the best government within this current model so called democracy, I tried not to be too radical in my first term , I don't want to scare the voters away. See what you think...

2007 Dionysis Party General Election Manifesto

Ambitions for Britain

Fulfilling Britain's great potential
Kris Martin sets out his vision for Britain’s future

Drug Legalisation
10 reasons to legalise all drugs

Social Revolution
Key measures for social change

1 Prosperity for all
How we expand our economy and raise our living standards

2 World-class public services
How investment and reform will improve public services

3 A modern welfare state
How we help people into work or education

4 Strong and safe communities
Introduction of the community restaurant

5 Britain strong in the world
How we make foreign policy work for Britain and the wider world

25 steps to a better Britain
Our key steps for first term

Look to the future
Beyond the first term

Five pledges for the next five years

Environmental pledge
Free public transport for all with extra services and more dedicated lanes, extended cycle routes, converting all public vehicles to Hybrids when possible. Bio-fuel to become major source of energy.

The only real way to deal pollution caused by congestion on the roads is to give people a practical alternative and make that alternative clean. Make the over-due transition away from oil to bio-fuels.

Schools pledge
Complete top to bottom reform of schooling and education funded with the newly available revenue stream provided by drug taxation. In this modern-age we are aware of much better techniques and methods of teaching, yet continue to struggle on with a long out-dated Victorian model of schooling with emphasis on testing, number-crunching, grouping and disciplining.

Health pledge
Changing perspectives. The danger with having a health service is that people don’t think about looking after themselves. We become dependent on Doctors and medicine. As part of the education reform I think that it is important to teach a personal responsibility for ones health. The only way this is possible is through education. This involves a wide variety of knowledge; it’s not just about everyone being a first-aider.

Crime pledge
Reform of policing. With the legalising of drugs, police will have more time to help communities in a less authoritarian and more friendly manner.

Community pledge
Re-birth of community spirit. Community funding for positive events to build bonds and a neighbourly spirit.

Fulfilling Britain's great potential

This general election is in every way is more important than all the others. It is the first time that Dionysis has pitched in. Therefore it is the first time that a party exists that isn’t interested in bullshit to appease middle-class voters, we are only interested in creating many great societies. Through-out the fabric of Britain there are many different people with wide ranging beliefs, desires, motivations and aspirations. Traditionally Britain has always been at the cutting edge because of our ability to produce great geniuses. It is time we focus on a return to these times by creating the greatest education system possible. One that is not united under one syllabus, Instead, one that learns the potential of each child and ensures the gentle nurturing of those individual gifts with life-long learning.

These are the foundations of a nation of Genius. Teaching genius is a contentious subject, since most experts will agree that it is impossible to teach genius, so how is this aim realistic or even desirable?

Firstly, what is a genius? A genius is a person of great intelligence, who shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in creative and original work. The term may also applies to someone who is a polymath or a prodigy. Although the term is sometimes used to denote the possession of a superior talent in any field (e.g., Maradona may be said to have a genius for football or Winston Churchill for statesmanship).

Why should we want them? I think it goes without saying that ‘superior talent’ is more desirable than ‘average ability’, however, I think it is important to mention that this is not about elitism, a golden age of genius is achieved through the freedom to learn for all not just those that show early aptitude (scholarships) or have money (private schools).

Regardless of which side of the nature/nurture debate you agree with, it is clear that intelligence is stunted or nourished dependent on the environment we are raised in. Our job is to create the best conditions to allow genius of all shapes and sizes, in all fields to flourish, and all the rest who maybe didn’t make the grade, I wager they’ll be far more self-confident, self-sufficient, self-reliant, intelligent and insightful. The average intelligence of the entire nation would rocket; it sounds like science-fiction when said out loud. This is the reality though, if we apply methods that we already know about.

The challenge for Britain

I have a confident belief in our country. We are tiny; a tiny little archipelago. But we have real strengths. Great people. Strong mentalities. Our history is a world history. What this tiny island has done for both good and bad has without doubt massively shaped the modern world.

The British people achieved magnificent things in the 20th century. But for too long, our strengths have been undermined by weaknesses of elitism and snobbery, vested interests and social division, complacency bred by harking back to the past. We achieved spurts of economic growth, but inflation would then get out of control. Our welfare state was founded to offer security, but its progress was stalled. We reached out to Europe, then drew back to become semi-detached.

It is as if a glass ceiling has stopped us fulfilling our potential. In the 21st century, we have the opportunity to break through that glass ceiling, because our historic strengths match the demands of the modern world.

We can use our openness and entrepreneurial flair to become a global centre in the knowledge economy. We can use our sense of fair play and mutual responsibility to be a strong, dynamic, multiracial society held together by strong values. We can use our historic and geographical position to link Europe and America, and help the developing world.

The key to tapping our strengths, to breaking through this glass ceiling, is contained in a simple but hard-to-achieve idea, set out at the heart of our party’s constitution: the determination to put insight, creativity and skill in the hands of the many, not the few.

I know as well as anyone that we have just begun; millions of hard-working families want, need and deserve more. That means radical change.

Ten goals for 2015

• Long-term economic stability
• Rising living standards for all
• Complete restructuring of education system from the ground up.
• A healthier nation with fast treatment, free at the point of use
• “Work – to eat” or “Learn – to eat”. Back to school for those on welfare.
• Bio-fuel hemp farms providing 50% of energy needs – lower energy costs
• A modern criminal justice system – relieved of the burden of drug ‘crime’
• Recreational Chemists set-up to accommodate drug market.
• State of the art, free public transport network.
• Revival of community spirit.

Making a difference…

2007 is a time for revolution. An intellectual revolution. I’ve said for too long that if democracy ever changed anything, they’d abolish it. Let’s test that theory

Governments are infamous for dumbing down their citizens to make propaganda more effective. Our schools are more about familiarizing our children with factory life than increasing their intellect. Line up, be quiet, fill out this form, do this test! In this environment it’s no wonder that there are no more Shakespeare's. That all could change.

To slow the damage inflicted on the world by industrialization is the most urgent issue mankind has ever faced. But there are many ways in fight against our fate and full investigations will be held to achieve the dream of 100% renewable energy. Bio-fuel will be our main weapon in the fight against pollution and free public transport should help get cars off the road. Petrol and Diesel engines are to be phased out, with clean alternatives available.

Unemployment. People claiming from the state is looked down upon by many, some think that it is just laziness, while others would enjoy seeing harm to come to them. However, the simple fact is – there can never be enough jobs, to have 100% employment is undesirable so with this in mind what can be done? I propose that the minimum people get now is what every unemployed person gets regardless of them looking for work or enrolling into education. However, those who enrol into educational courses will be paid as if they work – rates varying depending on the course and demands it sets.

An end to the end of education. For so many the end of school is freedom from teachers and all that education crap. This mentality has been built up by the helpless imprisoning feeling of our time at school. We have to end this view of learning and begin to see it as a life-long process, not just a crash course before being thrown into the work place.

Tranquil health service. Private health care has shown the way with health farms and the like, it’s time for the NHS adopt their successes and lose the factory like image associated with free health-care.

Poverty denies basic rights. With the ‘Learn – to Eat’ scheme, there is no longer an excuse for poverty, however, those who choose not to enrol do so without the threat of homelessness and starvation.

The centralisation of power only helps the powerful. So we shall focus on trying to get communities back on track managing as much as possible of their own affairs.

Drug prohibition doesn’t work. But we can use the tax to fund health and education, we will significantly reduce the work load of the police force, freeing more money, release all prisoners held for simple drug offences, freeing up even more money. Destroying the largest revenue stream for organized crime, overnight.

Ambitions for Britain

Stretching the family budget, finding time for children as well as work, holding on to mutual respect, staying healthy when there can be danger even in the air we breathe. These are daily worries that people face.

They are my concerns too. But, while there is always a market for people who say we are doomed, that all new ideas are bad ideas even as things improve, that we might as well curl up with our prejudices and shut the door on the world, I am an optimist. Dionysis is ambitious for Britain's future and is ready to lead.

First, we will sustain economic stability and build deeper prosperity that reaches every region of the country. Skills, infrastructure, the technological revolution – all are vital to raise British living standards faster. We will put our energy into helping the seven million adults without basic skills as part of an improved welfare state with the ‘Learn – to eat’ scheme. The fact that our previous governments have held our education hostage for only the wealthy is the disgrace that led to seven million adults being without basic skills in the first place.

Second, we seek to achieve a renaissance of status and quality for public services and their staff. We will build our success in primary schools then overhaul secondary schools; we will invest new resources and transform public transport services; and we will seek to extend the very best in culture and sport to all.

Third, we seek to modernise the welfare state. The benefits system will be restructured around work and education; support for children and families through the tax and benefits system will be transformed; cash and services for pensioners will be radically improved. Remove the barbaric threat of homelessness and starvation.

Fourth, we will strengthen our communities. We will reform the criminal justice system by legalising drugs. They are the underworld's last great source of illegal income – dwarfing anything to be made from gambling, prostitution or other vice. Legalizing drugs would knock out this huge prop from under organized crime. Smugglers and pushers would have to go aboveboard or go out of business. There simply wouldn't be enough other criminal endeavours to employ them all.

Fifth, we will turn our inner confidence to strength abroad, in Europe and beyond, to tackle global problems – above all, environmental degradation and the shame of global poverty. We will engage fully in Europe, help enlarge the European Union and make it more effective, and insist that the British people have the final say on any proposal to join the Euro.

These ambitions are summarised in ten goals for 2015. They will never be achieved by government alone. We know it is people who ultimately change the country. Our partnership with the voluntary sector has to be strengthened, we can learn from its diversity. We work with the private sector, drawing on its vitality. Countries only prosper on the basis of partnership – between government, employers and their employees, and the voluntary sector. What Britain needs is an active, enabling state, not a nanny state, doing things with people not to them.

So, while the other parties will spend most of this election telling you what their government cannot do, this manifesto sets out what our government can do. We know the power and value of markets, but we also know their limits. Now is the time to renew our civic and social institutions to deliver improvements in education, health, transport and the environment.

Fighting for values, not just for election victory

The other Parties always talk shit, nothing the ever say or do changes anything. The truth is – they don’t want change. They want things to say the same, only with them at the helm.

Their ‘beneficial policies’ only ever begin to materialise, 6 months before the next election then are put back on the back-burner if they hold onto power. How many times will we re-elect these charlatans. The leaders change but the lies remain the same.

In social policy their renewed commitment to cuts and privatisation and to withdrawing the support helping to heal social division, is just a throwback to the 1980s.

So the choice Britain faces today is clear, for the first time there is a party that isn’t full of shit. Dionysis party is about unleashing the power of human potential while creating social and environmental harmony. All the other parties focus on problems, while Dionysis rises to the ultimate challenge – unleashing a nation of Genius.

For many years, the Conservatives claimed to offer economic strength while Labour dominated social issues. Many people found their head telling them to vote Tory, and their heart telling them to vote Labour. Then New Labour turned out to be Tories, reinforcing the idea that Democracy doesn’t change anything.

Today, head and heart are coming together. Dionysis clear vision to completely eradicate poverty and unleash genius by allowing a free personal choice is revolutionary, yet blindingly clear. In our country all the money we need to do this is there, it’s just in the wrong hands. We are constantly shelling out £billions on a ‘War against Drugs’, £billions more lost in court, prisons, rehabilitation costs for people who’s crime was nothing more than possession of a controlled substance. Redirecting this amount of revenue into more constructive issues like education and poverty would make a phenomenal amount of difference in itself. Then to consider the revenue made from several of the largest industries in the world, £billions more now funding important social issues rather than organised crime. Now finally we have a party that can use its head to find the heart of the issue.

I deeply believe that, for Britain, and the world, a change is needed. So I ask you to take this journey with us. Together we can achieve this and show the world how it’s done.

Kris Martin

Leader of the Dionysis Party

10 Reasons to legalise all drugs

1. Address the real issues

For too long policy makers have used prohibition as a smoke screen to avoid addressing the social and economic factors that lead people to use drugs. Most illegal and legal drug use is recreational. Poverty and despair are at the root of most problematic drug use and it is only by addressing these underlying causes that we can hope to significantly decrease the number of problematic users.

2. Eliminate the criminal market place

The market for drugs is demand-led and millions of people demand illegal drugs. Making the production, supply and use of some drugs illegal creates a vacuum into which organised crime moves. The profits are worth billions of pounds. Legalisation forces organised crime from the drugs trade, starves them of income and enables us to regulate and control the market (i.e. prescription, licensing, laws on sales to minors, advertising regulations etc.)

3. Massively reduce crime

The price of illegal drugs is determined by a demand-led, unregulated market. Using illegal drugs is very expensive. This means that some dependent users resort to stealing to raise funds (accounting for 50% of UK property crime - estimated at £2 billion a year). Most of the violence associated with illegal drug dealing is caused by its illegality

Legalisation would enable us to regulate the market, determine a much lower price and remove users need to raise funds through crime. Our legal system would be freed up and our prison population dramatically reduced, saving billions. Because of the low price, cigarette smokers do not have to steal to support their habits. There is also no violence associated with the legal tobacco market.

4. Drug users are a majority

Recent research shows that nearly half of all 15-16 year olds have used an illegal drug. Up to one and a half million people use ecstasy every weekend. Amongst young people, illegal drug use is seen as normal. Intensifying the 'war on drugs' is not reducing demand. In Holland, where cannabis laws are far less harsh, drug usage is amongst the lowest in Europe.

Legalisation accepts that drug use is normal and that it is a social issue, not a criminal justice one. How we deal with it is up to all of us to decide.

In 1970 there were 9000 convictions or cautions for drug offences and 15% of young people had used an illegal drug. In 1995 the figures were 94 000 and 45%. Prohibition doesn't work.

5. Provide access to truthful information and education

A wealth of disinformation about drugs and drug use is given to us by ignorant and prejudiced governments and media who peddle myths upon lies for their own ends. This creates many of the risks and dangers associated with drug use.

Legalisation would help us to disseminate open, honest and truthful information to users and non-users to help them to make decisions about whether and how to use. We could begin research again on presently illicit drugs to discover all their uses and effects - both positive and negative.

6. Make all drug use safer

Prohibition has led to the stigmatisation and marginalisation of drug users. Countries that operate ultra-prohibitionist policies have very high rates of HIV infection amongst injecting users. Hepatitis C rates amongst users in the UK are increasing substantially.

In the UK in the '80's clean needles for injecting users and safer sex education for young people were made available in response to fears of HIV. Harm reduction policies are in direct opposition to prohibitionist laws.

7. Restore our rights and responsibilities

Prohibition unnecessarily criminalises millions of otherwise law-abiding people. It removes the responsibility for distribution of drugs from policy makers and hands it over to unregulated, sometimes violent dealers.

Legalisation restores our right to use drugs responsibly to change the way we think and feel. It enables controls and regulations to be put in place to protect the vulnerable.

8. Race and Drugs

Black people are over ten times more likely to be imprisoned for drug offences than whites. Arrests for drug offences are notoriously discretionary allowing enforcement to easily target a particular ethnic group. Prohibition has fostered this stereotyping of black people.

Legalisation removes a whole set of laws that are used to disproportionately bring black people into contact with the criminal justice system. It would help to redress the over representation of black drug offenders in prison.

9. Global Implications

The illegal drugs market makes up 8% of all world trade (around £300 billion a year). Whole countries are run under the corrupting influence of drug cartels. Prohibition also enables developed countries to wield vast political power over producer nations under the auspices of drug control programmes.

Legalisation returns lost revenue to the legitimate taxed economy and removes some of the high-level corruption. It also removes a tool of political interference by foreign countries against producer nations.

10. Prohibition doesn't work

There is no evidence to show that prohibition is succeeding. The question we must ask ourselves is, "What are the benefits of criminalising any drug?" If, after examining all the available evidence, we find that the costs outweigh the benefits, then we must seek an alternative policy.

Legalisation is not a cure-all but it does allow us to address many of the problems associated with drug use, and those created by prohibition. The time has come for an effective and pragmatic drug policy. With the savings made as a direct result of ending the ‘War on Drugs’ in combination with a massive new income stream through legalisation, we have a great tool to utilise in our fight for educational and social change.

Social Revolution

First steps.

1. Eliminate wasteful spending

2. Finding new revenue

3. Allocating funds

Overhaul of the education system is at the centre of the Dionysis manifesto.

A single aim drives our policy programme: to liberate people's potential, by spreading power, wealth and opportunity more widely, teaching insight, creativity and skill to all through the best teaching methodology; breaking down the barriers that hold people back.

But this ambitious project is only possible with the prospect of a massive new revenue stream as well as an end to wasteful spending of tax payers’ money.

The manifesto is comprehensive. Here we set out some of the key measures for investment and reform that we believe give us a historic opportunity to modernise our schools, transport network, criminal justice system and welfare state.

Education: the foundation

Dionysis believes that Britain needs investment in schools and teaching, not reckless tax cuts for the already wealthy.

Education is the foundation; to do anything, we must learn how to in the first place. It seems to me to be a logical step in any enlightened culture to facilitate education for all. Not just people who can pay for courses and afford not to work. We must rebuild the concept that was destroyed by our current mode of schooling – learning as life-long process. Education for its own sake, not just for the qualification.

We will:

• Set-up extra teaching colleges all over the country to accommodate new demand for specialised teachers.
• Use the most successful advanced educational methods in all schools, not just fee-paying schools.
• Double the number of schools.
• Reduce class size (outside lectures) to 15
• Eliminate testing
• Restructure school day.
• Make it a 24 hour facility dedicated to education, specifically child development – best place for a creche.
• Introduce mixed age classes, advancement determined by knowledge/skill – not age.

Transport network: freedom to move

Dionysis believes that an improved free public transport network is the only real way to deal with the congestion on the roads. All cars will be banned from all city centres, extra routes and services added to deal with increased demand.

Our ten-year goal is to have the cleanest, most effective state-of-the-art public transport in the world.

We will:

• Re-nationalise the buses and rail services.
• Make it free to all.
• Ban cars from city centres
• Double number of public vehicles.
• Replace old polluting vehicles with modern ‘clean’ ones.
• Launch taxi-boats in cities with suitable rivers/canals

Criminal Justice System: unburdened

Dionysis believes in unburdening the unnecessarily overworked criminal justice system. With the legalisation of drugs it will unclog the courts and prisons as well as freeing up police time.

Thus allowing attention to be focused on crimes against the common people and helping the minority of users who are ‘problematic’ users.

We will deliver:

• Safer streets and homes.
• An end to prison-overcrowding.
• Freed up police resources to fight crimes against people.
• Unclogged court system.
• Reduced official corruption.
• Crippled organized crime.
• A halt to the erosion of personal liberties.

Welfare State: education reform

Dionysis believes that people should be free to choose a path of education. Our aim is to restructure the welfare system to reward students.

Threat of homelessness and starvation, should be a thing of the past. Everyone out of work is entitled to roof over their head, cloth on their back and food in their belly. To suggest anything else is Barbarism.

However, to stop the rot caused by handouts in a desensitised society, there should be an overwhelming incentive to do something constructive. Learning is constructive, it should be rewarded.

We will:

• Give basic jobseekers today, available to all without the pretence of looking for work – cannot be taken away.
• Make all types of courses, available to all.
• Give a living wage to anyone enrolled in ‘learn to eat’ scheme.